Crop harvesting headers which use rotary cutters in replacement for the more conventional sickle knife systems have been available for many years. It is well known that such rotary cutters include a cutter bar or gear train which provides the main structural and drive communication components of the cutter. The cutter bar provides a series of longitudinally spaced vertical drive members each of which drives a respective one of a plurality of cutting disks at spaced positions along the cutter bar. The disks are mounted for rotation about a vertical axis standing upwardly from the cutter bar. The disks carry at a point on their outer edge a plurality, generally two, of flail type blades which rotate with the disk around the vertical axis in a cutting action.
One example of an arrangement of this type is shown U.S. Pat. No. 8,069,640 (Barnett) issued 6 Dec. 2011 to the present Assignees. This shows in FIGS. 8 and 10 a transfer roller for carrying the crop from the rear of the cutting disks at the cutter bar to a conditioning system where the transfer roller is longer than the conditioning system and because of the length, diameter and speed of this element a center support member with a bearing attached is needed to support this element relative to the cutter bar to reduce flex.
The support member must be attached to the cutter bar which is also flexible with the result that the connection in the middle moves relative to the ends so that the design must accommodate this flexibility.
The arrangement shown in the above patent has a long rigid shaft which couples the two parts together with the bearing in the center. This shaft needs to flex as the center of the roller moves relative to the ends. If the roller is assembled with too much misalignment, or a deflection in the center occurs that causes bending of the shaft beyond its yield point so that it takes on a permanent bend, then the shaft will in too short a time fails from fatigue.